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Monday, 19 March 2018

Falling Free is the latest book we’ve read in our Vorkosigan Saga Project. It’s actually the earliest book to take place chronologically and was published fourth out of all of them. Set about 200 years before the other books in the Vorkosigan universe, Falling Free is about a race of genetically engineered “quaddies” who were designed to function better in freefall than normal humans do.

You can read Katharine’s review of Falling Free here, and Tsana’s review here.

Katharine: Hello everyone! Welcome back, and apologies this discussion is so late. Totally my fault, and totally because I struggled to finish reading this one. I was not a fan.

Tsana: While this is definitely not one of my favourite Bujold books, I didn’t hate Falling Free. There was one aspect I was definitely not a fan of (and that was true the first time I read it as well), but other than that I found it to be an interesting hard science fiction book.

Katharine: We meet Leo Graff, who is being hired on a top-secret project and based out on a self-sufficient space station, to teach welding in space, and how to do it safely. Unfortunately it turns out that his boss is someone he’s run into before, and didn’t exactly give a glowing recommendation for… so even before he begins, he knows he’s up against someone who has a bit of a chip on his shoulder.

Tsana: Well I don’t think the boss knows that Leo hated him, which is why he gets Leo hired… but I’m jumping ahead a little. The interesting thing about this space station is not who’s in charge of it, but the project that is being run out of it. The company that owns the station has genetically engineered a new race of humans that can work and live in microgravity environments much better than normal humans can. Their most visible biological difference? A second set of hands instead of feet.

Katharine: Called quaddies, the oldest are only just at childbearing age, which several of them are now experimenting. Tony and Claire are the first parents, and Tony happens to become quickly Leo’s best student. The quaddies are mostly far too innocent for their own good and are considered property of the company.

Tsana: Yes. And when we say childbearing age, they’re like 15 or 16, not adults. That, and some of the interactions with adults in positions of power over them contributed to a significant squick factor. Is that the main thing you didn’t like about it, Katharine?

Katharine: Can go more into that after we raise the spoiler shield as it’s too hard to discuss without it. But basically… the quaddies exist and Leo is only one of many of their instructors, except we don’t see much of any of the others. We see doctors and the ‘mothers’ who care for the kids, and that’s about it.

Tsana: A lot of the book is a look at what might be thought up as a solution to various problems normal humans face working in space for long periods of time, as well as, er something that I’ve just realised is a major spoiler.

Saturday, 17 March 2018

Another mixed bag of stories. I am not keeping up with Uncanny, despite my subscription: I read one more story in the Jan/Feb issue and, meanwhile, the March/April issue arrived. Whoops. But hey, better than nothing and I think I'm a reasonable way through the fiction. The other stories were a bit random and older. I realised that sorting my Pocket queue by oldest at the top was going to make getting through the stories I've had on there the longest easier. We'll see how that goes.

The two best stories in this batch were easily "Lines of Growth, Lines of Passage" by Marissa Lingen and "Fiber" by Seanan McGuire (which I just really want to spell correctly — ugh, US English, why?). Both were funny, in different ways, and thoughtful too.

Sunday, 11 March 2018

Before I Let Go by Marieke Nijkamp is a non-genre YA book about a girl dealing with her best friend's death. I picked it up after hearing good things about it and thanks to having enjoyed the author's first, unrelated, book, This Is Where It Ends.

Best friends Corey and Kyra were inseparable in their snow-covered town of Lost Creek, Alaska. When Corey moves away, she makes Kyra promise to stay strong during the long, dark winter, and wait for her return.

Just days before Corey is to return home to visit, Kyra dies. Corey is devastated―and confused. The entire Lost community speaks in hushed tones about the town's lost daughter, saying her death was meant to be. And they push Corey away like she's a stranger.

Corey knows something is wrong. With every hour, her suspicion grows. Lost is keeping secrets―chilling secrets. But piecing together the truth about what happened to her best friend may prove as difficult as lighting the sky in an Alaskan winter...

This is a story about Corey dealing with her grief in the immediate aftermath of her best friend's death. Having moved away and gone to boarding school seven months earlier, this is her first trip back to the small town she still thinks of as "home". She wants to understand why Kyra killed herself, especially so close to Corey's originally planned trip back. When Corey arrives in Lost, the town is acting a bit strangely towards her and the more she learns the less happy she is with the answers she finds.

I don't want to spoil anything, but I think I saw this marketed as a thriller — and This Is Where It Ends certainly was one — but it isn't. I mean, there are weird and creepy aspects and there's a little bit of action, but I would class it as straight contemporary fiction more than anything else. I enjoyed it despite my usual preference for speculative fiction. It dealt pretty well with Kyra being bipolar, although the story was told from Corey's point of view and involved her and others coming to terms with (or not) Kyra's diagnosis. There were also queer characters and Corey herself is asexual, which is unusual and nice to see in a YA book.

The other big character in this book was the setting. This is a story that would not have worked — that could not have been told the same way — if it had not been set in a very small town. The inhospitable arctic setting of the town, which the in habitants have made their own, also contributed a lot to the overall vibe of the book. In fact, I actually really liked what the author did with a few scenes: writing them out as stage directions and dialogue to shift the impact and play with the reader's (and Corey's) perception of reality. It was an interesting device I haven't seen before. I thought it was strange at first, but it grew on me and made sense overall.

Before I Let Go isn't a happy novel, but it also wasn't as depressing as I expected it to be (but your perceptions may vary). It's main focus is on a particular set of ableist reactions to mental illness and it explores these well. It's a story of friendship and grief and a very isolated town. If that sounds like your kind of thing, or if you enjoy contemporary YA generally, then I highly recommend this book. I read it very quickly and will certainly be keeping an eye out for the author's future books.

Friday, 9 March 2018

Falling Free by Lois McMaster Bujold occupies a somewhat confusing place in the Vorkosigan universe chronology. It was the fourth book published — which is interesting to consider in itself — but is a prequel set about 200 years before the other books in the series. Aside from anything else, that means it stands entirely on its own with no character connections to any other books in the series. It does, however, lay some background for a race of genetically engineered people that appear in a couple of other books.

Leo Graf was an effective engineer...Safety Regs weren't just the rule book he swore by; he'd helped write them. All that changed on his assignment to the Cay Habitat. Leo was profoundly uneasy with the corporate exploitation of his bright new students—till that exploitation turned to something much worse. He hadn't anticipated a situation where the right thing to do was neither safe, nor in the rules...

This story follows an engineer who has been sent to a space station to teach a bunch of genetically engineered humans how to weld safely. Through his point of view we encounter the quaddies, who have two extra arms instead of legs for better manoeuvrability in free fall. We also see how the quaddies are questionably owned by the corporation that created them and the extent to which they have been psychologically conditioned to keep working for the corporation. Also, how ripe for exploitation they are as a group. We also see some of this exploitation from the point of view of one of the quaddies, Silver, although she doesn't entirely realise she's being exploited.

This was an odd re-read because the first time I read this book, at roughly the same place in terms of which books I read before and after (thanks to the Baen omnibuses), I had no idea what to expect. The second time, I knew what to expect, remembered not disliking the book but was still disappointed that Miles and/or Cordelia weren't in it. Also, the aspect of the book I remembered disliking was, of course, still there, for all that I came at it from a slightly different perspective. I also noticed that pretty much all the bits I didn't really like were very carefully written and challenged within the narrative itself.

Falling Free is one of the most hard science fictional books in the Vorkosigan Saga. There's a bit of hand-wavey science, but for the most part those bits of science aren't the focus of the story. The story very much deals with the scenario of convenient genetic engineering and the possible consequences of obsolesce thereafter.

This is a good book to read as a standalone if you're not sure whether Bujold's writing is for you. Since it stands alone there's not obligation to keep reading the other books, but they remain an easy possibility for readers who enjoyed this book. And although the iconic character of Miles doesn't appear in this book, the story is still feels like a part of the same universe. It's not my favourite Vorkosigan universe book, but it's not a terrible place to start (for all that I've only ever read it in the middle of the series) and it's a darned good read either way.

4 / 5 stars

A bunch of alternative covers, because it's my blog and I can do what I want (and they don't suck as much as usual):

First published: 1987 serialised in Analog and as a fully collected novel by Baen in 1988Series: Vorkosigan saga, fourth book written, first chronologically speakingFormat read: ePub as part of the Miles, Mutants and Microbes omnibusSource: Purchased from Baen several years go

Wednesday, 7 March 2018

Runtime by SB Divya is a science fiction novella and the author's debut book. I bought it from Tor.com a while ago but hadn't gotten around to reading it until now. What triggered my picking it up was reading an excellent short story by Divya, "Contingency Plans for the Apocalypse", which made me want to read more of her work. I am not actually sure whether that story and Runtime are set in the same future, since they're set in different parts of the US, but they could be.

The Minerva Sierra Challenge is a grueling spectacle, the cyborg's Tour de France. Rich thrill-seekers with corporate sponsorships, extensive support teams, and top-of-the-line exoskeletal and internal augmentations pit themselves against the elements in a day-long race across the Sierra Nevada.

Marmeg Guinto doesn’t have funding, and she doesn’t have support. She cobbled her gear together from parts she found in rich people’s garbage and spent the money her mother wanted her to use for nursing school to enter the race. But the Minerva Challenge is the only chance she has at a better life for herself and her younger brothers, and she’s ready to risk it all.

This was an interesting read, a bit different to what I usually end up reading with the racing element. Marmeg comes from the lower echelons of society which means she has no rights to anything except US citizenship and voting. Other aspects of civilised society, such as healthcare and education, have to be earned, either by being born well-off or by working very hard to make enough money to buy these things. Marmeg's plan is to win a race, or at least place in the top five, and use the prize money to get herself an education and help her brothers. The race is over several miles of difficult terrain and to be competitive one has to augment their bodies. The rich racers can buy fancy augments, but Marmeg scrounged hers from bins and wrote custom software, which is her specialty.

There was a lot of front-loaded world building in this novella. It was interesting social world building for the near future US society, but was a little tricky to keep track of since I was quite tired when I started reading. As I got further in the novella, however, I got used to the new terminology and didn't feel like I had to be really paying super close attention to follow the story. Anyway, I don't think that's really a flaw of the novella so much as unfortunate timing on my part.

I enjoyed this novella, but I didn't love it as much as I loved "Contingency Plans for the Apocalypse", which unfortunately raised my expectations quite high and was a sort of similar kind of story (with a dystopian society). So while Runtime wasn't disappointing at all, it wasn't quite a five-star read either. I still highly recommend it to all fans of near-future SF, especially stories exploring the tribulations of the most disadvantaged people in society. I will definitely be keeping an eye out for other work by Divya.

Monday, 5 March 2018

Three stories from the same issue of Uncanny, this batch. After realising how many short stories I was enjoying from Uncanny, I thought I should support them and subscribe. (It's also possible to support them on Patreon, but a yearly ePub subscription isn't very expensive, so I went with that.) They have rather more stories per issue than I realised, so I'm not even halfway through issue 20 (Jan/Feb 2018) yet. Expect more in the near future.

My favourite story from this batch was hands down "Contingency Plans for the Apocalypse" by SB Divya and, in fact, prompted me to finally pick up her novella, Runtime. Keep an eye out for my review of that in a couple of days. Also, if you happen to know whether "Contingency Plans for the Apocalypse" and Runtime are set in the same future, please let me know! I'm not sure whether they are, but I feel like they definitely could be.

Praying to the God of Small Chances by L Chan — A flash piece about wanting a miracle cure for the protagonist’s father’s cancer and an encounter with a god of small chances. The idea was interesting, but there just wasn’t much to the story, even considering that it’s flash. Source:http://arsenika.ink/fiction/praying-to-the-god-of-small-chances/

She Still Loves the Dragon by Elizabeth Bear — A lovely story about a knight errant who set out to meet a dragon and do the one thing she had not done: stand naked in front of the dragon she loved. Written with strong references to songs and ballads, including the ballad this story would become. It was a very nice story but I didn’t love it as much as I felt like I should have (whatever that means). Source:https://uncannymagazine.com/article/still-loves-dragon/

Contingency Plans for the Apocalypse by SB Divya — This story was right along the lines of what we were after for Defying Doomsday: it featured a protagonist with disabilities and an apocalypse. Also queer relationships. The apocalypse itself was a bit unexpected — I didn’t realise at first that it was set in the (former) US — and centred around what seemed to be a fracturing of the country into police states and safe states. The setting was very extreme (violent and oppressive) and affecting, which contributed to making this an excellent story. Source:https://uncannymagazine.com/article/contingency-plans-apocalypse/

Saturday, 3 March 2018

Waking in Winter by Deborah Biancotti is a science fiction horror novella, which I would not have guessed from the cover. I actually procrastinated on reading this novella for quite a while because the cover gave me the impression of a very different type of book. I have previously read the short story collection Bad Power by the same author, which is quite different to Waking in Winter (and about superheroes).

On a far, frozen desert world, Muir the pilot discovers an ancient artefact in the ice. She sees a mermaid at first, but later comes to wonder if it is Ningyo, a fish god from her homeland in Japan. A god that brings misfortune and storm. A god that—by all means possible—should be returned to the sea. The rest of Base Station Un see something else. Bayoumi the lab rat sees Sekhmet the lioness goddess, daughter of the sun god. Partholon the creep finds in its shape a ‘good, old-fashioned cruxifix’. But all of them want to possess it. All of them want it for themselves.

The setting of this novella is an icy alien planet currently being explored and studied by scientists. The main character, Muir, is a pilot for an expedition in which there isn’t a good relationship between the science and support staff. One day, out flying a bit off her mandated survey route, Muir sees a giant mermaid buried under the ice. When one of her colleagues comes to check it out, he instead sees a giant lotus flour. Where Muir saw a missing hand, he saw a missing petal. What is the object beneath the ice? Why is part of it missing? Aliens? The story of the novella answers some of these questions while others remain ambiguous. As well as the story of the investigations of the artefact, we also get some background on Muir and the other characters, including why they’re on this alien planet in the first place.

The horror elements in this novella are fairly mild; it's creepy rather than gory. It's definitely more science fiction and a bit weird. Also, while the basic premise — humans studying a weird alien artefact — has been done before, it's the specific characters that Biancotti brings to Waking in Winter which really make it. I quite enjoyed reading this novella, especially since it was much more my kind of thing than the cover suggested it would be.

This is a character-driven story, with the reactions and coping mechanisms of the characters a main strength of the novella. I recommend Waking in Winter to fans of creepy science fiction and (light) horror. It's not a book for readers who only enjoy hard SF since it leans a lot on the non-scientific mystery elements of the discovery on the ice planet.

Thursday, 1 March 2018

The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander is a novella released by Tor.com and is the first longer thing of the author's that I've read. (She also wrote the Hugo shortlisted story "Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies", which I reviewed here.) Based on this excellent novella, I certainly intend to read more of the author's work in the future.

In the early years of the 20th century, a group of female factory workers in Newark, New Jersey slowly died of radiation poisoning. Around the same time, an Indian elephant was deliberately put to death by electricity in Coney Island.

These are the facts.

Now these two tragedies are intertwined in a dark alternate history of rage, radioactivity, and injustice crying out to be righted. Prepare yourself for a wrenching journey that crosses eras, chronicling histories of cruelty both grand and petty in search of meaning and justice.

From the cover and the kind of vague blurb, I didn't know what to expect from this book. What I got was an intricately woven set of stories about radium girls, radioactive elephants and elephant folk tales. This novella is set in an alternate timeline where, even a century ago, elephants have been found to be sentient and humans are able to communicate with them via sign language. But they are still exploited and oppressed — by circuses and by the radium watch factories.

The main story here is of the elephant Topsy and the dying radium girl Regan, who has stayed on at the factory to teach the elephants how to paint the dials. Both of them are already doomed. Their story is framed by elephant folk tales and informs a future (present) debate about using glow in the dark elephants as markers for nuclear waste sites. I admit it was that last element that first really grabbed me but in the end all the elements of the book came together nicely. If anything, the conclusion of the future storyline was the least satisfyingly conclusive, while the others had clearer endings.

Anyway, if you don't hate elephants or women, I highly recommend this book. You don't have to come into it knowing anything about the radium girls or the history of elephants in the US (I certainly knew nothing of the latter, and only learned that there was a real elephant named Topsy — who in real life never worked in a radium factory, shockingly — in a blog post by the author after I'd read the book). I will be recommending it to all and sundry at the slightest provocation.

Tuesday, 27 February 2018

This batch looks like a Yoon Ha Lee binge, and it is a bit, but I also had a pretty long break between stories here. Life stuff and my escaping the aforementioned through Zelda: Breath of the Wild (a video game) has lead to reduced reading. Whoops.

Anyway, <3 Yoon Ha Lee and his stories. The three included here are all set in the Machineries of Empire series (see also my reviews of Ninefox Gambit and Raven Stratagem), and I really love that world and the characters. I can't wait for book three to come out, and hopefully there are more stories set in that world that I haven't read left for me to get to.

I would also like to highlight the last story, "The House That Creaks" by Elaine Cuyegkeng as a pretty great horror story (and not overly gory, as far as I'm concerned). The author is a relatively new discovery for me (yay reading a bunch of short stories) and I've been enjoying her work. Go have a read if horror is your thing.

Extracurricular Activities by Yoon Ha Lee — Set in the same universe as Ninefox Gambit and Raven Stratagem, this story follows Jedao while he is still young. He goes on an undercover mission to extract a friend from academy. I really enjoyed this story. It was funny with serious moments. A good read for both readers of the novels and new comers to the world. Source:https://www.tor.com/2017/02/15/extracurricular-activities/

The Battle of Candle Arc by Yoon Ha Lee — Shuos Jedao leads a Kel army to victory against heretics. I had some memory of this particular battle being mentioned in the novels (Ninefox Gambit and Raven Stratagem), but misremembered the context. In any case, an interesting read, even more so since it was published years before the novels. Clearly the authors has been living in this world for a long time. Also, the explanations of the factions and calendar were done particularly well, especially given how complicated they can get. This story is a good introduction to the world. Source:http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/lee_10_12/

Yowie by Thoraiya Dyer — A story about being overwhelmed and lost. And yowies. A look at a dreary life amid a fantastical discovery. Not a bad story, but not exactly a pleasant read either. Source:Sprawl edited by Alisa Krasnostein

The Robot’s Math Lessons by Yoon Ha Lee — An adorable flash story about a robot making friends with a little girl (who I think is Cheris from Ninefox Gambit). Source:http://www.yoonhalee.com/?p=793

The House That Creaks by Elaine Cuyegkeng — The story of a haunted house told fro the house’s point of view. A really interesting take, but also pretty creepy since we learn about the (supernatural) rituals that made the house haunted, as well as it’s pre-haunted past in the Philippines. Source:http://thedarkmagazine.com/the-house-that-creaks/

Sunday, 25 February 2018

Hold Back the Stars by Katie Khan is a near-future science fiction love story. When I picked it up, I had misremembered it being YA, but it's not. (The characters are in their late 20s.) The social world building is the most interesting aspect of this book, despite a few hiccups, and while the science was more or less OK for the most part, the author did hang some crucial plot points on some rubbish physics, which I will be ranting more about below.

Carys and Max have ninety minutes of air left.
None of this was supposed to happen.
But, perhaps this doesn’t need to be the end…

Adrift in space with nothing to hold on to but each other, Carys and Max can’t help but look back at the well-ordered world they have left behind – at the rules they couldn’t reconcile themselves to, and a life to which they might now never return.
For in a world where love is banned, what happens when you find it?

Hold Back the Stars is a love story like no other.

This book has two timelines, the floating in space with ninety minutes of air left timeline and various flashbacks showing us how the characters got together as a couple and, to a lesser extent, how they ended up floating in space. The two timelines worked, but I think the linking and integration of the past storyline could have been more clever. It was fine as it was, but the flashbacks were all quite discrete for all that they were chronologically ordered. That aspect was mostly enjoyable but didn't exactly impress me. Also, most of the story focussed on the love story and I'm not completely convinced they were a perfect match so it was a bit meh.

What was interesting was the social aspect of the world building (for the physics aspect, see rant below). In this near future world, the EU has expanded to include large swathes of the world, notably not China, not sure about the rest of East Asia, and not the former US. (Bafflingly, Australia was welcomed into the system after Russia, which seems like a strangely out of touch take on the matter, from the perspective gained by living in the EU.) Now called Europia (Europe + utopia, sigh), they are aggressively anti-nationalism and pro-individualism and seem to be very socialist, although this isn't discussed in the story, it's just the only thing that makes sense. Their solution to nationalism is to have everyone on Rotation, moving to completely different parts of Europia every two years and encouraging them to learn lots of languages to be able to communicate with each other well. That part I found very interesting, if slightly dystopian when it mentioned a seven year old living on Rotation away from his parents (I was assuming children moved with their parents until a sensible age, which wouldn't have undermined the system). Of the two main characters, one comes from a fiercely pro-Rotation family and the other didn't enter Rotation until she was 18, which sets up a lot of interesting conflict between them.

The more pertinent and contrived conflict, however, comes from our main couple vs Europia's Couples Rule, which states that people can't settle down and have kids until 35 (because fertility problems have been solved). I thought Rotation was a really interesting idea, but the Couples Rule was taking things a bit bafflingly far, in a "How did society really thing this was a good idea?" way. (They should have just stuck to having parenting exams, in my opinion.) The main characters obviously want to challenge the rule and be together, but there's a lot of weird overreactions that aren't really fully addressed.

So the physics rant. For reasons unexplained, a shockingly dense asteroid field has settled in near-Earth orbit, which is stopping people from leaving Earth (by destroying stuff in space — miraculously not any communications satellites apparently because the future internet is doing quite well). Also there are frequent meteor showers, of the size to burn up in the atmosphere, which apparently terrifies people in places that have devolved to uncivilisation (like the former US). I don't see why shooting stars are so terrifying, but on the other hand it's not like the US school system was great before it was destroyed? Anyway, I was willing to let the magical appearance of an Earth-orbiting asteroid field pass, until the solution to getting of the planet was to try to fly through the asteroid field and find a path that way. What the actual fuck. That is just so mind-bogglingly not how it works. The first thing the space agency would have done when asteroids magically showed up is map and track them all using telescopes on Earth. That way no one would have been trapped (although it might still have been inconvenient to get past them). Also the whole mapping a path through the asteroid field makes it sound like they were magically hovering above the earth (actually, a lot of things sounded like that...) when, duh, they'd be in orbit and not all on the same trajectory if they weren't actually magically gravity defying. Speaking of magic gravity, the author manages to define Lagrange points correctly, then completely misunderstands practical implementations. (Mind you, I would have let that last one pass if it hadn't been repeated three times.)

A lot of the above became apparent near the end of the book, leaving an unpleasant taste in my mouth as I finished it off. There was one physics fail much earlier which annoyed me a lot because it also implied the author doesn't read much SF since it's something that seems to come up a lot (correctly) in other books/stories. Basically, at one point when the main characters are floating in space, their comms fail and they panic and try to mime at each other and stuff. These characters are tethered together and neither of them (not even the more astronaut-trained one!) think to touch their helmets together and talk that way. Sigh. Instead they end up using a torch in a slightly nonsensical way until they fix the radio. So that annoyed me, because it could have been a lovely moment too. (Disappointingly, in a short interview at the back of the book, the author cites the torch solution as one of her favourite parts of the story...)

As I said earlier, the social world building in this book is really interesting. I wouldn't mind reading another book about other people set in the same world to get more insight into other aspects of this future. There were a few contradictions between the idealised society and how things worked in practice that I would like to see explored more. But in the end, and because it was loaded towards the end, I couldn't see past the physics to properly enjoy the book overall. I didn't hate it, but those aspects were very frustrating. The author also did something unusual with the very end, which I don't want to spoil, which piqued my interest as I got to it, but there seemed to be a bit of magic to some of the insights the characters gained because of that writing device, which, well, didn't make sense. But it was still an interesting way to finish things off, even if it broke some narrative rules.

I would recommend this book to people who enjoy reading about future societies and characters getting together. It's definitely not a capital R-omance book, and I don't think it would satisfy a reader who went into it with those expectations. Read it for the social world building and do not expect any of the science to make sense.